Energy Storage

27th November 2018

Arsenal football club has today unveiled a new battery storage system big enough to allow its Emirates Stadium to run off stored power for the duration of an entire football match. Installed by Pivot Power, the 2MW/2.5MWh battery system is capable of powering the 60,000-seat Emirate Stadium for more than two hours. It will allow Arsenal to save cash by drawing down electricity from the grid when prices are low, minimising its exposure to peak time prices which can be as much as three times higher than overnight prices. The Emirates Stadium is already signed up to a 100 per cent renewable energy tariff with Octopus Energy, and Arsenal claim its decision to add battery storage will help cut its carbon footprint further and support the development of a low-carbon grid in the UK.

Arsenal has become the UK’s first football club to install large-scale battery energy storage, in a bid to cut electricity costs and support green energy. Tucked in the basement of the Emirates, the system is capable of powering the 60,000-seat stadium for an entire match, or the equivalent of 2,700 homes for two hours. The Gunners’ home is one of the biggest stadiums in the UK, with energy demand coming from refrigeration, full-time offices and growing lights to maintain the grass on the pitch. Consumption spikes on match days but not as much as in the past because of energy-efficient LED floodlights. While other UK football clubs have installed solar panels and similar green measures, Arsenal is believed to be the first with large-scale storage.

Sitting in London’s InterContinental hotel in Park Lane, wearing a grey suit and politely sipping a cup of tea, Anil Srivastava, the chief executive of Leclanché, looks a million miles away from a hoodie-wearing Silicon Valley-style technology disrupter. Despite his unassuming appearance, the veteran executive, who formerly led Areva’s renewables division, has steered the world’s oldest battery manufacturing company away from the brink of crisis and straight into the front lines of the rapidly evolving electric vehicle sector. “At this stage it is a scale industry,” he says. “Either you grow in multiples or you get out.”

Clients have included Greenpeace, Nuclear Free Local Authorities, WWF Scotland and the UK Government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.

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